University of Virginia Library

Ah, Suburbs: The Monochrome Chessboard

By DAVID RITCHIE

CD/Mike Powell

No matter how
sophisticated and attractive a
city appears from miles away,
its appeal somehow fades as
one approaches through the
suburbs. I have visited
practically all the Babylons of
the Middle Atlantic coast, and
the pattern is ever the same: a
brisk ride through the country
and arrival in the city's core,
and in between a dismal crawl
through the shopping centers
and settlements of the
Vorstadt.

What images a suburb calls
to mind! It suggests a
monochrome chessboard, eggs
in gray cartons, close-ups of
window screens. It is the
Atrocious Average in stone
and glass, flesh and bone,
function and design. It is the
blah incarnate. If it ever had
any appealing qualities, it has
lost them all. As it is now,
offers the civilized man or
woman little save a place to
eat, sleep, and park the car.

The suburb has neither the
otiosity of the countryside nor
the human energy of the city.
In suburbia these two forces
meet and destroy each other in
toto, blam. When the vapors
clear, we are left with inertia
instead of rural calm, and in
place of urban drive, a
simple-minded impulse to keep
up with neighbors whom no
one but a human Volkswagen
would think fit to keep up with.

Some weekend, take an
hour or so to stroll through a
suburban development; any
one will do. You will probably
notice about 20 homes per
block, all built on basically the
same pattern on lots basically
the same size, housing families
with basically the same
income, tastes, and number of
cars, pets, children, and so
forth. This kind of community
exemplifies planning of the
most basic kidney: everything
the same.

This lack of variety may be
one reason why so many
harried souls are drawn to the
suburbs. Suburban life appeals
to those trying to flee the
pressures of society, because
the suburb's sheer
homogeneity does away with
one of the most disquieting
pressures of all: that to develop
one's potential.

Think a moment. Give an
average American a choice
between an intellectually
strenuous life and the kind of
middle-class vegetation which
the suburb provides, and which
will he or she choose? In at
least nine cases out of ten,
perhaps as few as one in
10,000 will opt for the former
life-style – a decision which
will tag the intrepid soul as
"too highbrow" for solid
society, and possibly seditious
and un-American as well.

Where no one is expected
to be outstanding, to have
habits or principles much
different from anyone else's, to
read the editorial page (or
anything more distinguished
than The Love Machine), to
listen to music better than the
yowls and twangs of Country
and Western, to have ideas
beyond the grasp of a
six-year-old or a cheerleader –
in such a milieu most
Americans feel completely at
home, and only in time of
direst need will they leave its
uterine safety.

The suburbs face death by
entropy, and from that end
they cannot save themselves.
The have no internal energies
to call on, no indigenous
source of ideas on how to
revitalize themselves. So, those
ideas must come from outside,
specifically from persons who
had the wisdom to stay out of
suburbia and so avoid the
cerebration it brings on
those who live there.

For what my suggestion is
worth, I propose a suburban
living tax, to be levied by the
federal government on every
family which elects to settle in
anything even faintly
resembling a suburb. Make it a
stiff tax, as stiff as law will
allow.

Then, perhaps, we will see
fewer Americans moving into
that glum region of foggy
thought and reflex action; and
of the minds we thus save from
paralysis, maybe one will give
us some idea how to make the
suburbs something better than
a haven for the mediocre and the
botched.